Speech #1030013683

I come today to address the House on a bill I have introduced today. a bill which is Rntitled "The Exclusion and Asylum Reform Amendments of 1993." Some of you may have watched the television program "60 Minutes" last Sunday and were as aghast as I was at the ease with which we see aliens coming into this country. at our airports and other ports of entry. who have fraudulent documents or no documents at all. and how they can come in and. if this is the case. simply say. "I claim political asylum. I am in fear of persecution if I am returned to country X. Y. or Z." And immediately the Immigration officers release them Into the public domain of the United States. They give them a work permit. They allow them to go get a Social Security card and a drivers license and 90 percent of them are never seen again. not before a hearing officer or anywhere else. r3 1500 Mr. Speaker. it is absolutely absurd how this can happen. and I am disappointed that we have not had hearings on this subject before. I introduced a similar bill to the one I am talking about this time in the last Congress. but we have not yet addressed the matter. What is happening in this country is that we have got a system abroad of people who are smuggling folks into our country. taking advantage of a very big loophole in our law. If somebody comes to this country and he or she has no documents at all. we should not allow that to happen. that they can Just walk away into the society and have a work permit and so forth. The reason why. technically. this is being done is because we are very liberal on giving someone the right to claim asylum when they first set foot in our Nation. either on the sandy shores of the beach or in an airport. We say. "If you profess the right magic word and say that youre afraid that youre going to be persecuted back in your homeland because of some political beliefs or religious beliefs. then were going to give you the opportunity to go before an immigration judge and have a full hearing on this matter." Well. the problem is the immigration judges are not sitting at the airports of this Nation waiting to hear these cases. They have backlogs. a hundred thousand cases sitting there in the Nation today waiting to be heard. It takes literally years to hear these cases. and all of that time while people are waiting to be heard they are existing out in the countryside and oftentimes are not even showing up for these hearings. When somebody goes to JFK. as the "60 Minutes" report showed that they did do on Sunday. and they make this political asylum claim. there is no room to hold them. even overnight. at JFK. They are full at the house. so to speak. at the little bit of detention center immigration services has. So. they are immediately paroled into the country and given this temporary work permit. and they are told they have a hearing in another couple of months. They are supposed to come to just a preliminary hearing. It does not resolve anything. And then there may be 3 or 4 years. or perhaps a few months. if they are lucky. for coming back for a fullfledged hearing. if they show up. What my bill does is very simple. It says. "If you come in with a fraudulent document. or no document at all. any port of entry. whether its an airport or a land port. you are going to be assigned to a specially trained asylum officer." There are already 150 of them in the Immigration Service today. and that specially trained asylum officer is going to ask a series of questions to determine if they have a credible fear of persecution if they return to their homeland. My bill says. "If you dont have a document at all. if youve not made a political asylum claim. or if you do not present a credible fear of persecution to this asylum officer. youll be put on the very next return plane and shipped back to the country of origin. You are not going to have a day in court here and an immigration judge type court. Youre not going to be given a temporary work permit. Youre not going to be allowed to get a Social Security card or a drivers license. Youre going to be shipped back where you came from." And I think that is very important. Mr. Speaker. 35.000 came through our airports alone last year in this category. 15.000 of them at Kennedy in New York. and most of those. 90 percent of those. we will never see again before an immigration judge. They are here. As a practical matter. they are here permanently because we do not have a system to round them up.